The man of marshmallow
FILMS
SUPERMAN III Directed by Richard Lester
Modern audiences have been led to expect a certain level of quality on the screen, even in the hand-me-down context of sequels. They will not, surprisingly, find it in Superman III, this summer’s super-bore. The film’s predecessors were extremely smooth renderings of the comic strip material, but Superman III looks as chintzy as a Grade-B movie serial. Director Richard Lester obviously wanted to bring a light tone to the material, beginning with a slapstick credit sequence that debunks the flashy, imperial look of the two previous movies. But Superman III, with a supercilious script by David and Leslie Newman, is so light it almost vanishes. The unspectacular flying effects feature shabby blue fringing around Superman’s body, and he keeps landing either with a thud or in unintentionally funny balletic poses.
The movie’s light tone has been influenced by the casting of superstar Richard Pryor as Gus Gorman, a com-
puter wizard used by the villain, Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn), for nefarious, megalomaniacal purposes. Gorman taps into a weather satellite to destroy the Columbian coffee crop so that Webster can corner the market and then strands the world’s oil tankers in
the middle of the Atlantic for similar gain. When Superman throws a wrench into the proceedings, Gorman computes the formula for kryptonite, which, while not perfect, has the effect of turning the Man of Steel into a mean customer. But there is no tension developed because it is clear from the start that Gorman will switch over to Superman’s side. In the meantime, the viewer is treated to Vaughn’s penny-ante villainy and what appear to be well-placed plugs for American Express, Trailways, Bloomingdale’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Christopher Reeve, who has had little luck with other movie roles (Monsignor, Somewhere in Time), has lost his light comedian’s geniality. The script has dropped him in a dreary subplot with his high-school sweetheart, Lana Lang (a sadly wasted Annette O’Toole), and virtually discarded Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane, the best reason for seeing the other films. Superman, going through his personality change, should have been intensely menacing, instead of a big sulk. And Pryor’s inordinately tame routines are well suited to the movie itself. The general lassitude of Superman III and the moviemakers’ disregard for an audience’s acquired standards, prove that Superman is a celluloid idea whose time has come and gone.
LAWRENCE O’TOOLE
